A histogram of volume traded at each price level rather than across time. The longest bar marks the price at which the market most fully agreed.
Volume Profile (also called Volume by Price) aggregates a period's volume by price level rather than by time, drawing the result as a horizontal histogram pinned to the price axis. A standard volume study answers "when did people trade?" Volume Profile answers "where did they trade?" The single change in axis transforms what the chart reveals.
The longest bar — the price at which the most volume changed hands — is called the Point of Control (POC). It is the period's centre of mass: the price at which the largest number of participants built their positions.
The lineage runs back to the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Peter Steidlmayer's Market Profile, codified in the 1980s, is the parent of today's volume-based variant.
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